Jane Fonda opens up about her mother's suicide

When Jane Fonda was younger, she thought her mother died of a heart attack — because that’s what her father told her.

It wasn’t until she read a movie magazine that she learned that her mother died by suicide when she was 12 years old, People reported. Fonda’s mother, Frances Seymour, slit her own throat while at a nearby mental institution after a long battle with bipolar disorder.

“If you have a parent who is not capable of showing up, not capable of reflecting you back through eyes of love, it has a big impact on your sense of self,” she said.

“As a child, you always think it was your fault … because the child can’t blame the adult, because they depend on the adult for survival. It takes a long time to get over the guilt.”

In order to better understand her parents, the 80-year-old actress went on a deep dive into their lives via her mother’s medical records.

“When you go through that kind of research … if you can come to answers, which I was able to do, you end up being able to say, ‘It had nothing to do with me,’” Fonda shared with the magazine.

“It wasn’t that I wasn’t lovable. They had issues,” she continued. “And the minute you know that, you can feel tremendous empathy for them. And you can forgive.”
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